Federal Land States (Public Domain)

The public domain included most of the land west of the Appalachian Mountains that was obtained by the federal government. After the United States was established, the lands that had been claimed by the colonies were ceded to the federal government. In return, the federal government allowed those colonies (now states) to retain their land. These states were in charge of granting and/or selling their own land. They became known as State land states.

In addition to the above, the federal government also obtained land as a result of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the War with Mexico (1846-48), and other means. The federal government was in charge of granting and/or selling the Public Domain. The states which were created out of the Public Domain are commonly known as Federal land states.

Over the years, more than one billion acres of the Public Domain have been transferred to private or state ownership through the types of grants described below. Approximately 25 million surveyed lots were eventually described in tract books. An estimated 6 1/2 to 7 million land titles were granted to individuals and states.

To accomplish this massive distribution of land, the government needed to resolve Indian claims to the land and private claims by settlers already on the land (including those who had received grants from Spain, Mexico, or France). They also needed to encourage settlement of the open lands, reserve lands for military bounty, survey the land to provide a legal description, and establish a record-keeping system.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 was the first of over 300 laws to help accomplish these tasks. It established the rectangular survey system that divided most of the land in the public domain into townships and sections. Later laws established local land offices to distribute the land. These were under the direction of the General Land Office (GLO) in Washington, D.C. (now known as the Bureau of Land Management).

Types of Grants

The GLO distributed over 1,031,000,000 acres of the public domain lands as follows:

Donation lands and cash or credit sales. To encourage settlement of open lands, approximately 29 percent were sold very inexpensively for cash or credit (1785 to 1908) or donated to encourage settlement (1840s to 1903 in Florida, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington).

Homestead grants. Another 28 percent of the land was distributed after 1862 to homesteaders who could receive title to the land by residing on it and making improvements for five years (various laws modified these requirements). About 60 percent of those who applied for homestead land never completed the requirements to receive a patent to the land. However, their applications have generally been preserved in their case files, and these may contain helpful family information.

Grants to states. Approximately 22 percent of the land was granted to the states, who, in turn, may have sold or leased it to individuals.

Private land claims. Two percent of the land was granted to individuals who could establish prior ownership or had titles previously granted by Spain, Mexico, or France. At first these claims were presented directly to Congress. Latter, special commissions or courts were appointed by the U.S. Congress to resolve these claims.

Locating the Land and its Associated Records

For federal land states, most of the initial land purchases came from the government and while cash sale purchases may have minimal paperwork, homestead claims, mining claims or military bounty warrants may have accrued paperwork containing valuable information including immigration records and details involving a person’s life. The accumulation of this paperwork has been placed in a case file which is held at the National Archives.

The first step is to locate the land patent or final certificate which is the document stating the requirements have been completed for obtaining a parcel of land. The patent will include the date, legal description of the land, patent number and the office that issued the patent. The next step may be to obtain the case file containing all the documents relating to that land acquisition.

Obtaining the Land Patent

The Bureau of Land Management has setup an online Land Patent Search for anyone named in a federal land patent or warrant from 1788 to the 1960’s. The originals of these records are located at the National Archives. This is the best place to begin when searching for a land patent because of the ease of navigation when searching for an ancestor. An image of the patent usually accompanies the results. The minimum information needed is the State where the land was purchased and the name of the person obtaining the patent. To learn more about land patents see the wiki page entitled Land Patent Search under United States Land and Property.

Obtaining the Case File

Also known as Land Entry Files or Patent Files, these documents are the most helpful records for researchers because some files contain valuable biographical and even immigration information. The case file is located in the National Archives which may be viewed in person or you may obtain photocopies through correspondence. Most of the case files have not been microfilmed, except for the Oregon and Washington donation lands and some of the private claims files. The Family History Library only has copies of the Oregon and Washington donation land files, 1851-1903 that are on microfilm.

All the rest, the vast majority of the case files, are ONLY available in Washington, DC. To learn how to obtain copies, visit the National Archives website.

To obtain copies of a case file you will need the following information which may be found in the land patent records indexed at the BLM-GLO web site:

1 Name of the purchaser 2 State where the land was purchased. It is also helpful to know the present day county. 3 Name of the land office. This is given on the land patent, but if there is a question, a good source for finding the land office is the book entitled Land and Property Research in the United States[1] which includes a section in Appendix B giving the boundary maps for all federal land states including the name of the land office. 4 Type of certificate (homestead, cash, bounty-land warrant, mining, timberland etc.) 5 Certificate number or patent number

Incomplete Applications

There are numerous instances where an ancestor began a claim application but did not complete the process. These records will NOT be in the BLM-GLO land patent search, but they are in the application papers which will be in the case files at the National Archives. Since the BLM-GLO index will not be useful in this event, another method will need to be used to obtain the legal description of the land, which is one of the requirements for obtaining the case file (as described above), as well as aid in finding where the land is located.

Legal Description of the Land

The legal description of a parcel of land includes the township, range and section of the property, or in the case of a great portion of Ohio bounty-warrant land, may include metes and bounds. The following are places where a legal description of land may be found:

Deeds - the written legal document transferring ownership of property. These are usually found at the county level. The Family History Library has a collection of many older deed records for a large part of the counties and towns in the US. To access these records go to the FamilySearch Catalog (www.familysearch.org) Place Search > County or Town > Land

Tract books - If you know the general location of the land, you can search the tract books to obtain the legal description. They are arranged by the legal description of the land. Copies of Tract books are held by Family Search and may be searched online.

Tract books are divided into two geographical areas; Eastern States and Western States.

The Western States tract books are located in the National Archives Building in Washington D.C. and include Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.The address for the National Archives is:

National Archives and Records Administration

700 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington D.C. 20408-0001

The Eastern States tract books are held at the Bureau of Land Management and include the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin. The address for the Eastern States office is:

Eastern States Office, Bureau of Land Management

Department of the Interior (BLM-ESO)

7450 Boston Boulevard

Springfield, Virginia 22153

Phone: 703-440-1523

The original tract books for many states may be found at the National Archives branch that serves the state.

Family History Library has microfilm of the track books beginning with FHL 1445277. United States, Bureau of Land Management. Tract Books. Washington, D.C.: Records Improvement, Bureau of Land Management, 1957. The tract books for Alaska and Missouri are missing.

Bureau of Land Management also has copies at the BLM offices in Anchorage, Phoenix, Sacramento, Denver, Boise, Billings, Reno, Santa Fe, Portland (Oregon), Salt Lake City, and Cheyenne. You can search these records yourself, or the staff at the BLM offices will search the tract books for you for a fee. Most state archives also have copies for their states.

Plat maps represent a piece of land which has been subdivided,showing boundaries of the individual lots. In some cases a plat map may give reference to the original patent or tract. These may be found at the following places:

Family History Library. To learn whether plat maps are available at the library, go to the FamilySearch Catalog at Place Search > County or town > Land or Maps.

Federal plats are another source for finding the legal description. They are often referred to as the “township plats.” Most of these are available at the BLM offices mentioned above or at the National Archives—Cartographic Branch. Each state archive may also have microfilm copies for the state.

Private Land Claims

A private land claim involves a request for a land title in an unusual way such as direct petition to Congress. The original 1789 to 1908 case files of private land claims in parts of 15 states are at the Textual Reference Branch (see address below). The files of some states have been microfilmed and are available at state archives and at the Family History Library.

Many of the applications, petitions, and memorials presented to Congress from 1789 to 1837 have been published and indexed in:

Indexes to land, pension, bounty land, and other claims presented to Congress from 1789 to 1909 are found in published summaries or digests (tables) at the National Archives and federal repository libraries (at major university libraries). The Family History Library has the alphabetical digests for 1789 to 1871:

United States Congress. House. Digested Summary and Alphabetical List of Private Claims Which Have Been Presented to the House of Representatives. 1873; reprint Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1970. (FHL 899874-77.) WorldCat entry.

National Archives Address

When ordering case files of both federal and private land claims, you will need the following address:

2. The program returns the centroid and SE corner of the Township and section as latitude and longitude and the acres of the section. Use the latitude and longitude in any mapping software to find these locations on a map.

D. Use the USGS store and the following process to locate a USGS map with the latitude and longitude of the property corners preciously determined. Locating a property on a USGS map does not have a lot of genealogical value other than to help understand the conditions your ancestors lived in, main travel routes, rivers, lakes and lay of the land where they lived. Other interesting features are shown that can help you understand your ancestors better.

1. Click on "Map Locator"

2. Use the zoom feature on the map so that the center of the map latitude and longitude match closing the lat/long your are looking for.

3. Click the circle "mark" the point.

4. Click the icon created by the software over the point. The name of the USGS map which includes that point will appear with the option to purchase or download the map. Use the download feature.

Published Sources

Some societies, archives, and individuals have transcribed, indexed, and published portions of the federal land records, usually for a state or county. Those at the Library are usually listed in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under

[STATE] - LAND AND PROPERTY,

or

[STATE], [COUNTY] - LAND AND PROPERTY.

Related Wiki Articles

Tract books history, preparing to use them, how to use them, content, access, and associated case files.

BLM Land Patent Search discusses the index to eight million patented (finished) land applications, and military bounty land papers. Each entry in this index includes the land description useful for finding an ancestor in a tract book.

Land entry case files describes the 10 million files in the National Archives created to document individual claims to federal land using cash entry, credit entry, homestead, military bounty land, private land claims, mineral or timberland rights. A case file exists for each tract book entry.

Rectangular surveys includes a section about tract books. This article shows how principal meridians, baselines, townships, ranges, sections, and aliquots are used for land descriptions found in tract books and other property records.

United States Land and Property page is a general discussion of land record research for genealogists. It serves as a table of contents to related Wiki pages about American land records including tract books, related land entry case files, and the BLM land patent search.